FBFF: Blogger self-promotion

I loved reading and replying to your comments on my post about fashion bloggers and self-promotion - thanks to all of you who shared your thoughts! I'm also very flattered that post was chosen as the basis for this week's set of questions for Fashion Beauty Friend Friday, in which I'm participating for the first time today. My answers are below.

1. How do you promote your blog?
I post updates on my Facebook page, Twitter and host giveaways. I think it's important to have Facebook and Twitter pages because these platforms have become number one news source for many people. I'm not doing as much promotion as I'd like right now because I'm working on future plans for Dressful (I'd like to start implementing video next year) and unfortunately the day only has 24 hours. However, my friends and readers often help me promote my blog by sharing posts on other sites, which makes me incredibly happy. :)

2. In your experience what has been the most effective form of self promotion?
Giveaways are great for getting new people to your blog. Leaving thoughtful, sincere comments on other blogs works wonders if you want to establish relationships with fellow bloggers, which is what really pays off in the end. People who keep returning to your blog, read everything you write, think about it and discuss it with you bring you so much positive energy and motivation to keep blogging.

3. Do you think there is a wrong way to promote yourself and your blog?
Technically it's only wrong if it doesn't work. I see these ways more as annoying and aggressive.

4. When it comes to others pushing their product what annoys you?
I'm not a fan of the "I'll follow you if you follow me" or "Following you please follow me back" proposals. Leave me the freedom to decide if I'm interested in your blog or not! Also, if I see a generic two-word comment that could go under any post (such as "great blog!") followed by a bunch of links, I am all but motivated to check out that blogger.

5. In Dressful's post on this topic earlier in the week she said, "It's impossible to respect someone who wants all the attention, but adds nothing worthwhile to the conversation." Do you agree?
Of course. ;)

----------------Check out the links to other bloggers' responses on ModlyChic!

13 Comments

ana
on November 12, 2010 at 12:14

after I read your previous post I checked my mail and there it was, an email from a fashion blogger saying come check out my blog. Her blog was a very wannabe fashion blog and I consider it spam. So to me, she was promoting her blog with spam. Doesn't sound so healthy.

I totally agree with how annoying those "I'll follow you if you follow me" deal. How about your follow me because you like my blog and what I have to say? Not just because it would just boost our numbers! Blogging isn't about that. It's about forming a community and adding great content and discussion to the blogging table. That's why leaving great comments on blogs is one of the best ways to promote your blog!

congratulations Eva :)) great interview! and I am very excited about this video direction, i think it's a great idea. it's very true that there are not enough hours in a day to do everything, so one of the realities are that it just takes time to develop a blog, it's impossible to do everything straight away. i think a lot of shameless self-promoters don't understand that they just have to be patient, but they what all the readers, pageviews, popularity straight away, and that's where they go wrong.
in fact, it is more exciting to follow a development of a blog, to watch the blogger and the blog change and grow with time

At first I was a bit surprised that video isn't so prominent in fashion blogging yet, but the more I work on my ideas, the more I understand how difficult it is to do something more than a webcam video, even for someone like me who was taught all this stuff at film school and "knows everything" from the technical point of view. The thing is that one of the kinds of videos I'd like to do is something nobody's done before, so it's quite abstract and I need to find a way to translate what's in my head into film language. Keep your fingers crossed it'll turn out at least decent. ;)

Great advice and I definitely agree. It's the spammy comments that annoy me the most - the two-liners and the 'follow me' ones. Thankfully I get most of those via email these days. I think bloggers also need to realize that having 100 intelligent followers that are genuinely interested in your content is worth more than 1000 followers who merely comment to get a comment back.

I have recently started a fashion blog and although it appears very little compared to more developed blogs like your own I have been spending a lot of time on it. I was just wondering how much time on average it takes for you to write a blog? After a fair bit of research (my dissertation at uni was on blogs) I realise how much they are taken over both fashionistas and company websites and really appreciate your blog on how to promote yourself as the main purpose of mine is to share my interests and hopefully appeal to future employees (im currently trying to find a marketing related job.
Thanks again,
Justadmiring

It depends. Sometimes writing a post takes an hour, sometimes five hours. I spend even more time if I'm shooting photos or video for the post. I think reading other blogs and fashion-related stuff also sort of counts as blogging (as in deriving inspiration for your own work). I discussed this same topic here: http://dressful.com/3032/fbff-blogger-burn-out

People with great blogs who say they don't spend much time working on them are liars ... but does anyone really say that anyway? :) Good blogging takes time, however you also have to know how to make the best use of that time by knowing what your blog is about and what you want to achieve with it.

I love to dress up so I was thinking if I can make a fashion blog. Well I'm starting with my Instagram account (@jaiabels). I'm a bit nervous if no one will read my blog but still this helps me a lot. Thank you for posting this!